As the Olympics season is now over, it’s time to draw some conclusions.
This year, Tokyo hosted some of the most challenging Olympic Games to date. The pandemic reshuffled a lot of cards for one of the most anticipated events in sports. The 2020 Olympics actually took place in 2021, without a live audience, a lot of internal controversies, and the lowest TV ratings since 1988.
Considering traditional media, this Olympics season has been nothing but a historic low, so we’ve decided to see how things went from a digital perspective.
Using Semrush’s powerful intel that spans across social media, Google, and Amazon searches, we’ve pinpointed some key stats for this year’s Summer Olympics:
How popular were the Tokyo Games among the online audience? How much real online traction did the Olympics gain? Which athletes attracted the largest social media coverage? Have the Summer Games had an impact on consumer demand for sporting goods? And way more.The 2020 Tokyo Olympics: Social Media Interest Trends
Each Olympic Games come with a separate Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube account. This year, the Tokyo Games added TikTok to the mix, opening the first-ever official TikTok account for the Olympics.
Here are some overall stats across the official social media accounts for Tokyo 2020:
The number of followers across Tokyo 2020’s official social media accounts
Social channels
August 18
1,05M
1,1M
503k
YouTube
133k
TikTok
72k
Engagement stats for Tokyo 2020’s official social media accounts
Social channels
Engagement (July 22–August 18)
570k
10,04M
2,7M
TikTok (views)
13,9M
Audience Sentiment Towards the Games
The Tokyo Olympics (#Tokyo2020) had 136k mentions on Twitter over July and August 2021. Curiously, Rio was also mentioned more than 44,000 times, implying that this year’s Summer Olympics were heavily compared to those of 2016.
The opening day (July 22) received slightly more attention than the closing day (August 7), with 1,3k tweets, including the main #Tokyo2020 hashtag.
For those days, the majority of tweets came with a neutral sentiment, with less than 3% expressing negative feelings. But the opening ceremony triggered 4% more positive tweets than the closing one, which could indicate that interest in the Olympics slightly declined over the course of the Games.
While the general sentiment was quite neutral, social media analysis shows that the skepticism towards running the Summer Olympics in the middle of the pandemic was also expressed across social media.
The most popular Olympics-related tweet on the date of the opening ceremony featured a sarcastic image of Tokyo 2020’s mascots:
This tweet received more engagement than the Olympics 2020 official accounts’ welcome post (the second most popular tweet that day).
Sports That Saw a Popularity Spike During the 2020 Olympics
To uncover which sports witnessed sudden popularity, we checked search volumes for all the sports featured in the Olympics, starting from August 2017 to July 2021. This gave us a good idea about the search/interest trends for each sports type.
Olympic Disciplines That Saw the Biggest Interest Spike
While it’s typically not easy to attribute search volume surges directly to the Olympics, some sports do allow us to pinpoint the connection.
We’ve found the disciplines that saw peaking search volume counts in July 2021 and also added MoM (June 2021 vs. July 2021) search interest changes into the mix — all to see which sports potentially owe their skyrocketing popularity to the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. They are all listed in the table below:
Olympic discipline
July 2021 search volume
MoM search volume changes (July 2021 vs. June 2021)
cycling bmx racing
2,900
+2536%
canoe slalom
135,000
+1945%
cycling bmx freestyle
2,400
+1312%
3x3 basketball
246,000
+1259%
artistic gymnastics
201,000
+805%
As for the sports that were only added to the Olympics this summer — skateboarding, karate, sport climbing, surfing, and softball/baseball — the last three also saw July 2021 as the top month in regard to audience interest.
Olympic Disciplines That Saw a Declining Interest Trend During the Olympics
With June holding a lot of the big-name sporting events like Euro 2020, Roland Garros, and a part of the Wimbledon series, some sports like football, tennis, and boxing saw declining search interest numbers during the Olympics season. All three disciplines saw their search volumes go down by 18% MoM.
Which Athletes Stole the Show and Got the Biggest Online Traction?
Although interest in tennis as a discipline didn’t spike during the Olympics, the same cannot be said about tennis players.
Below, you can see a list of the top 20 most searched golden medalists. We also looked at their audience size across Twitter and Facebook during the period of the Games — all to see whether golden medals translate directly into more followers.
Top 20 Golden Medalists by Social Media Audience Counts (July–August 2021 stats)
Name
Total
Kevin Durant
11,9M
19,2M
31,2M
Dani Alves
10M
9,1M
19,1M
Damian Lillard
4,9M
2,8M
7,8M
Richarlison
3,5M
652k
4,1M
Paulinho
2,2M
1,4M
3,7M
Draymond Green
1,1M
1,5M
2,7M
Zach Lavine
1,8M
448k
2,2M
Javale Mcgee
1,5M
355k
1,8M
Teddy Riner
1M
748k
1,7M
Jayson Tatum
22k
822k
844k
Khris Middleton
552k
98k
650k
Jrue Holiday
382k
179k
562k
Alexander Zverev
362k
106k
468k
Devin Booker
386k
10k
396k
Sue Bird
211k
168k
379k
Bam Adebayo
6k
198k
204k
Jerami Grant
121k
49k
171k
Sunisa Lee
1k
166k
167k
Ryan Murphy
36k
26k
63k
Jordyn Huitema
3k
16k
20k
Alberto Fernandez
7k
3k
10k
We’ve noticed that golden medal owners have almost triple the audience compared to their silver counterparts. But do golden medals necessarily imply larger social media coverage?
When it comes to the most-tweeted-about Tokyo 2020 athletes, the top 10 most popular list doesn’t only feature gold or silver medalists.
The most mentioned Tokyo 2020 Olympics athletes on Twitter (June–August 2021 stats)
Name
Number of mentions
Simone Biles
70k
Novak Djokovic
55k
Naomi Osaka
39k
Kevin Durant
36k
Devin Booker
30k
Tadej Pogacar
27k
Jrue Holiday
26k
Khris Middleton
24k
Alexander Zverev
20k
Andy Murray
20k
Novak Djokovic, Naomi Osaka, Tadej Pogacar, and Andy Murray — some of the top players in their sports niches — didn’t get the top medals at the Summer Olympics but still received some incredible attention from the Twitter crowd.
Naomi Osaka’s withdrawal from the French Open due to mental health issues, Novak Djokovic’s top titles during Wimbledon and the French Open, Tadej Pogacar’s victory at the Tour de France, and Andy Murray’s misfortunes during this year’s tennis season kept the social media audience’s curiosity high despite their not-so-bright performance during the Games.
How the Summer Games Affected Consumer Demand
The Olympics are not simply a big deal for the Olympics committee, athletes, sponsors, and the general sports-loving crowd. Brands, and especially sporting brands, watch out for the Olympics season, trying to anticipate the next shift in consumer demand.
We could expect large sports events to trigger higher interest in sports-related goods.
To see if that’s indeed the case, with the help of Sellzone tool we’ve analyzed the top Amazon searches for all things sports and decided to identify some of the most striking growth trends that could potentially be linked back to the Olympics.
Amazon Most Wanted Sports-Related Products
Having analyzed over 6K Amazon searches with Sellzone Keyword Wizard tool for any sports-related goods in July 2021, we’ve spotted that searches to the top 100 most popular sports products grew by a whopping 900%.
And out of the 6K analyzed products, almost 31% saw peaking search numbers in July 2021 (compared to all the monthly searches starting in January 2021). The largest increase in search demand was shown by products for tennis, golf, swimming, gymnastics and volleyball: in July and August their Amazon search volume increased sometimes by 1,000% or higher.
Product
Growth in July/August 2021
June 2021 search volume
August 2021 search volume
football cleats
1400%
97k
250k
tennis skirt
210%
154k
236k
gymnastics leotards
1890%
12k
123k
volleyball shoes
880%
30k
120k
volleyball shorts
860%
22k
101k
volleyball knee pads
960%
15k
88k
tennis shoes womens
1071775%
515
85k
football mouthpiece
13300%
5k
85k
football visor
1200%
16k
85k
gymnastics mat
770%
26k
75k
Wrapping Up the Tokyo 2020 Olympics
Now that everyone has reported on the aftermath of the 2020 Summer Games in regard to viewership, ratings, advertising dollars, and more, we hope that our brief digital impact analysis also adds to the overall picture.
As much as the 2020 Olympics have been overwhelmed with all kinds of challenges and unexpected turning points, we can see that despite a lower interest and a lot of controversies, they still had an impact on the digital landscape — bringing in more traction to social media, the athletes, various sports, and even sports-related products.
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